The Pursuit Part 41

His eyes became sombre.

"No, my dear young lady," he said. "My optimism has not reached so far, as yet. But I have persuaded our captors that Captain Aylmer's detention here is not necessary. They do not exact a parole from him, but they permit me to loose his lower limbs and to give him the freedom of the deck. It is because his release implies your own that this concession gives me--and him--undoubted pleasure."

He stooped as he finished speaking, and quickly and deftly unlashed the cords at Aylmer's ankles and, with a jerk, pulled him to his feet. He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the still tethered hands.

"I fear I am helpless there, my dear fellow," he said. "Complete rights of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt were not allowed me."

Claire parted her lips as if to speak, hesitated, and pressed them firmly together again. The shackling of those wrists was a mere blind but--Aylmer forbore to communicate the fact to Miller. Why?

Miller looked at her keenly, inquiringly.

"Yes?" he said. "You want further information? Is that it?"

"I have a hundred questions to ask," she smiled. "How did you get this concession? Where are we? What are they doing with us? What is our destination?"

He shrugged his shoulders again.

"As to the first--a little tact was all that was necessary, though tact, indeed, is too self-laudatory a word. Logic, let us say. I showed him how unnecessary it was to antagonize a man with whom he would eventually have to chaffer. That was mere common-sense, was it not?"

"Chaffer?" repeated Aylmer. He considered Miller; for an appreciable moment he surveyed him silently. "That implies a bargain, and to bargain there must be goods to sell. Landon has none which will tempt me."

"Liberty," suggested Miller. "Comfort, and not for yourself alone?"

"With Landon I do not bargain," said Landon's cousin, doggedly. "I have set myself to clean our name of the stigmas with which he had bedaubed it. There are no terms to be made."

"You sacrifice yourself?" said Miller. He paused. "Have you the right to sacrifice others?"

"No," said Aylmer, quietly. "You and Miss Van Arlen must do exactly what seems best for yourselves. That is a deal apart."

Miller shook his head.

"No, my dear Captain Aylmer," he answered. "That is exactly what it is not. Landon's terms concern us all."

Claire looked at him anxiously.

"He has told you them?" she cried. "You are his messenger?"

Miller gave a little bow of acquiescence.

"They are bluntly these," he said. "For you he demands from your father the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds. For your nephew, double that amount. For myself, I must apologize for placing myself next, but the financial sequence necessitates it, ten thousand. For our friend here--nothing, or, to be precise, nothing in cash."

She did not flinch as he mentioned the sums. She merely looked contemptuous.

"Is that all?" she asked. "He is a common blackmailer?"

Miller shook his head.

"No," he said. "Unfortunately that is not all."

He looked directly at Aylmer.

"It rests with you," he said suddenly. "He wants from you--silence. What has happened is as if it had never been. You are to allow him to take his place unquestioned in the society which befits his rank. He wishes to turn a new leaf."

Aylmer met the look with blank incredulity, at first. Then his lips tightened with determination.

"And you?" he cried. "You are taking him seriously? You are going to give him this money?"

Miller's out-turned palms expressed a vague pessimism.

"Is there an alternative?" he asked.

Aylmer laughed harshly.

"Blank refusal: what is his answer to that?"

The dark eyes searched the two expectant faces meditatively. The thin prehensile fingers picked at a loose splinter in the bulkhead.

"I think he would find a way," he said slowly. "I think--in fact he has threatened it--he would--_hurt_ you!"

Aylmer stared at the gray figure, puzzled, frowning. Miller had used a new voice for the two last syllables, a voice that shook ever so slightly with some concealed emotion. "Hurt you," he reiterated sharply, and then darted a quick, bird-like glance at Aylmer--a look full of interrogation.

Claire Van Arlen moved forward with a sudden startled movement.

"Hurt!" she cried. "You mean that he would use torture?"

"I think," said Miller, very slowly, "that he would use anything."

And then Aylmer began to laugh--loudly, gaily, and quite whole-heartedly. Miller's eyebrows proclaimed their owner's astonishment.

"Melodrama!" explained Aylmer, still chuckling. "I remember Landon as a small boy, even before his Eton days. He bred these leanings then. He wasted his pocket money on 'bloods,' I think they are called--penny exhilarators for youths of tender years, crammed with impossible villainies. And now he is going to tie flaming splinters between my fingers and squeeze my thumbs in the crack of the door! This is the price I am to pay for refusing him social rehabilitation. We cannot congratulate him on his sense of humor, we really cannot."

Miller paused over his reply, looked down, looked up, and then bridged a moment of hesitation with his usual expedient--a shrug.

"For the moment I fear he hasn't got one," he said.

"Possibly not," agreed Aylmer. He nodded towards the door. "I'll take advantage of his concessions to come and see." He gave another little confident nod to usher the other two before him. As the child ran forward he caught him up with his bound hands and raised him shoulder high. Then, stooping, he pa.s.sed out at Miller's heels on to the deck. He was laughing still, laughing up at the boy as the childish fingers steadied themselves in his hair.

"You won't be able to do that when they shave it to put the pitch plaster on," he cried. "And when they've stretched me on the rack, I shall be too tall to carry you out of a cabin. And as for being a pig man again, and carrying a spear after the thumbscrews have been applied, why, it simply won't bear thinking about!"

As he emerged on deck he looked about him keenly. Muhammed's was the first figure which caught his eye. The Moor was sitting on the gunwale opposite the companion, looking sh.o.r.eward. And the sh.o.r.e, to Aylmer's surprise, was very near on the starboard bow.

Suddenly he realized that it was not the mainland which he saw, but an archipelago of islands girdled with reefs. Rockbound channels were frames to pictures of the dun red African strand half a dozen miles away.

He looked aft. The sun was not far from its setting, hanging in a red disc above the distant hills of Algeria. The captain was at the tiller.

Beside him lounged Landon, watching a gray-painted torpedo boat which had emerged from the shelter of the islands and was about to pa.s.s close under their stern. The gold and crimson of the Spanish naval ensign floated at her flagstaff.

Landon looked round as he heard the footsteps of the newcomers on the deck. He nodded them a greeting without changing his seat, and did it with a studied air of contempt.